Saturday, April 18, 2009

We’re still not huge Capital One fans, yet we get more inquiries about their credit cards than any other topic on this blog. So we thought it was time to re-survey their offerings and post an update.

As we’ve said before, we think their reward schemes are generally unimpressive (not bad, just not great). But they are also one of a very few cards that do not add foreign-exchange fees, making them a top choice for international travel. For most purposes, that’s the only time we use our Capital One cards.

Capital One’s website lists 28 different cards (yes, 28) and most seem like pretty much their old standards, but two new (to us) cards caught our eye.

The latest version of the No Hassle Miles Rewards card offers 2 “miles” per dollar after $1,000 a month in spending, with one mile otherwise. (Capital One “miles” aren’t real airline miles that you can transfer into an airline account. They’re simply points you can redeem for statement credit for ticket purchases.)

The Orbitz Visa Signature offers Capital One’s usual 1 point per dollar, except it gives you 3 points/dollar for purchases from Orbitz. In general, 1 Capital One point translates to a 1% rebate/travel credit. So if you use Orbitz a lot, this would be equivalent to a 3% return – pretty good in today’s reward environment.

Many frequent-flyer commentators value traditional airline miles at about 1.5 cents each. With real airline miles, you need to make sure you maximize your miles (ie: don’t burn 25,000 miles for a $200 ticket), or you could end up having less value than Capital One’s 1%. We, however, feel we use our airline miles at about 2 cents each, so with other types of reward cards for cash or points, we look for a 2% or better return.

We’ve discussed points/miles/reward cards frequently. Browse through our archives on the topic, and you’ll also see some suggestions for cards for international travel.

Disclosure:

We write this blog for fun. We offer our honest opinions and commentary about the topics we choose to discuss.

Although the world runs on “grease,” none seems to flow our direction – no free trips, no free products. We have received invitations from a couple of hotels to visit their properties, but have not yet done so. Should we ever accept any freebies, and subsequently write about that company/product/destination, we will disclose that information in our review. Our review will still carry our honest opinion – positive, negative, or neutral.

Secondly, we are not part of any affiliate marketing program. We get no compensation from referrals if we write positively about an airline (however unlikely that would be), destination, product, or service. We get no revenue from any link to any site we refer to anywhere in our writing.

Lastly, we have no control over ads that Google posts on our site. We don’t even know the content of those ads, as they change frequently and at random. To be honest, we don’t even look at what’s being advertised.